Plain talk
about money.
Welcome to Cheddar Den. I’m Jon Dykstra, founder, publisher, and a recovering lawyer with a long-running fascination for the history of money, economics, and the personal finance decisions most of us face one way or another.
Connect on LinkedIn
From law and business school to publishing.
My first career was in law. My second was in business, where I picked up an MBA and learned how money actually moves through companies, markets, and households. My third, and the one that finally stuck, is publishing.
Cheddar Den exists because most money writing I came across was either too loud (get rich quick) or too vague (be wise with your spending). I wanted a third option. Practical, well-researched, and curious about where ideas like interest, banking, retirement, and even the concept of a dollar actually came from. Knowing the history of money changes how you handle the present of it.
There’s a second layer to Cheddar Den that I’m especially proud of. Most money writing tells you what people should do. I’d rather show you what people actually do, so you can compare yourself with real readers instead of one pundit’s rules. As you read, you can answer small questions — how you budget, what you’d do with an unexpected $1,000, whether you lived through the prices in a 1975 shopping list — or guess what something cost before the number is revealed. It’s all collected anonymously, and as the answers add up, the totals come back to you as research we publish right here: a genuinely new window into how real people handle money.
I’m based in North Vancouver, British Columbia, with my wife and two sons. When I’m not writing or running publications, I’m usually outside on a trail or a chairlift. Cheddar Den is the kind of site I wish I’d had in my twenties.
Journalist
LaToya Anderson, Research Journalist
I’m a former News Reporter and remain a Research Journalist with a passion for discovering careers to help people identify the vast number of professions and overall job opportunities available. During my tenure as a Reporter, I trained many high school students in choosing the ideal career pathway by identifying their strong skills and honing them.
I like to contact companies to find out what positions are most critical to their operation, then highlight these. I search for positions that we often hear little or nothing about, like a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer, a Prosthetist, or even a Backend Engineer, like my daughter.
Choosing the ideal career means knowing what the options are and that’s where I come in with more than two decades of research experience. You’ll find me near the river, ocean, hiking, or cooking when I’m not writing. Happy reading!
Reviewer
Christian Schwarz, Writer/Reviewer
Christian Schwarz is interested in money and careers, from budgeting and saving to the jobs people do and how they got there. That curiosity about how people earn, spend and plan is why Christian writes for Cheddar Den.
Three principles guide everything we publish.
Cheddar Den isn’t a hot-takes site. It’s a place to slow down, get the context, and walk away with something you can actually use.
Money with context
Where did the dollar come from? Why does inflation happen? What did people actually do before credit cards? We cover personal finance with the history and economics behind it, because the context is what makes the advice make sense.
Careers, deeply researched
LaToya brings two decades of research journalism to our careers coverage. We spotlight the overlooked roles, the unexpected pathways, and the jobs you’ve probably never heard of, with practical detail on what it takes to actually get there.
Practical, not preachy
No financial doom, no hustle culture, no get-rich playbooks. Just clear writing about money, work, and the decisions in between, written for adults who can think for themselves.
What readers actually do with money.
Most money advice is one expert’s rules. Cheddar Den gives you something more useful: what real readers actually do with money, how they save, spend and budget, and which old prices genuinely surprise them. Every article asks a few one-tap questions, collected anonymously, and the totals become answers you won’t find anywhere else.
Guess the price
Guess what a house, a toy or a loaf of bread cost before it’s revealed, then see how close other readers came. It shows how far our memory of old prices drifts from reality.
Money-habit polls
Saver or spender? Cash, debit or credit? See how your habits compare with other readers, plus “Lived it · Remember it · Before my time” on the nostalgia pieces.
Anonymous by design
Collected anonymously: no names, no emails, no IP addresses, no income questions. We only ever publish totals across many readers, and small groups are never reported.
The full picture: Data Collection · Privacy Policy
What you’ll find here
A growing library of personal finance guides, career deep dives, and money history written by curious people for curious readers.
Personal Finance Guides
Budgeting, saving, investing, and the decisions that shape your financial life. Clear, plain-spoken guides that respect your time and your intelligence.
Career Deep Dives
From Diagnostic Medical Sonographers to Backend Engineers, LaToya’s careers coverage explores the jobs you’ve never heard of and the pathways to land them.
Money History & Economics
How money actually works, where it came from, and why the systems around it look the way they do. Context for the decisions you make every day.
Money, careers, and the
history behind both.
Browse the latest articles, dig into a career deep dive, or read up on the money history that shapes your everyday finances. Wherever you start, you’ll leave with something useful.